Dr. S.

Early game interloper is quite limited, but once you're established (bow, decent crafted clothing), it opens way, way up.

You definitely don’t get cabin fever from spending time in the back of a regular cave. That counts as outside for that purpose. I believe that you do in mines (and “inside” caves with loading screens). TLD has several different ways that an area can be inside or outside. For example you can start campfires in caves with loading screens but not mines, which otherwise seem pretty much identical. OTOH you can also start campfires in some places that seem like they should be considered indoors, like the break room in the cannery in BI.

I play on a very similar machine. Did you turn down the resolution in addition to lowering the quality? That makes the biggest difference. I play at 1440x900 (I think) and roughly "medium" quality settings.

No. I don’t go to the hut because there are matches there; I would go there first even if there were no matches. I go there because (in order of importance) 1. It has a bed where I can warm up and rest if necessary. 2. It’s on the way to more civilized regions. 3. The lake is a good place to collect cattails and possibly rabbits. 4. I know I’ll probably find something useful there; what it is specifically is not so important.

That's true, matches are my second priority on a new interloper run, after getting to a location where I can warm up. (But note that you can get by for a few days if you find a flare, even if you don't find matches right away. And some caves can be navigated in the dark, in daytime at least.) And it's also true that some matches are in specific locations in interloper. I think that's unfortunate and the locations should be more randomized. But those locations are mostly pretty logical (and I would expect them to be, even if they were more random), and are places you're going to visit anyway. One is the mountaineer's hut in TWM. Let's say that Hinterland switched things up in the next release and made the match locations in interloper more random. And suppose I start a run in TWM and go to the hut and there are no matches. Then what? Well, I'd probably leave TWM and head to the abandoned prepper's cache, then to the PV farmhouse, stopping at skeeter's or burnt ridge cave, as well as draft dodgers on the way. Unless I started at night, I can probably hit all those in the first day, even accounting for killing time while warming up. So that's five or six locations searched on the first day. If I don't find matches at any of those locations, I can search the outbuildings and Thompson's crossing the next day, etc. If there are matches at any of the main locations in PV, I can probably find them. As @Serenity says, they're not that uncommon. Oh, and I should add you don't even need matches immediately if you can get to a region that has toilets.

The important map knowledge for interloper is where the shelters are, not what's in the shelters. I absolutely agree that you need to know where the shelters are to survive on interloper. You can't wander for long without a specific destination, it's true. But that's different than needing to know where tools are. For example, I'm confident I could survive to day 50 on interloper (assuming I survive Day 1, which is the most dangerous) without ever picking up a heavy hammer or hacksaw, just living off of found food, cattails, rabbits, etc. Having a bow, knife, and hatchet make things easier, but they're not requirements for immediate survival. And while it's true that interloper is limited in many ways, in other ways it encourages the player to explore parts of the game that other levels don't. When I played voyageur, I never ate cattails or made rose hip or reshi tea; they just aren't necessary. But they're vital in early-game interloper. So those limitations pushed me in directions I wouldn't have followed otherwise.

I agree with a lot of @Pillock wrote, but this bit is not true at all; it's a myth. You can absolutely survive playing interloper without this kind of specific knowledge about tool spawn points. If you look in the main locations you will inevitably find what you need before too long without hunting in a specific location for a specific item. And you certainly don't need to know the correlations. Like, I'm sure I've found a heavy hammer on occasion in the Carter Hydro Dam (big surprise), and I think I've found the hacksaw in the basement of the PV Farmhouse, but beyond that I can't remember where else I've found these items; it's just not that big of a deal. As I've said before in other threads, I think the game would be more interesting if the spawn points were more randomized, on all levels.

In my experience what @SpanishMoss says is not true. For example, you can absolutely kill a bear with three or four arrows from behind. Also, for example, raising the archery skill increases arrow damage (separate from critical hit chance). It's not clear what this could mean if the only mechanisms were critical hits and bleed-out.

Yes. I didn't start playing interloper seriously until I had good map knowledge from surviving 300+ days on voyager, but other than that I survive on interloper without external help. Of course it was very hard at first, I died many times after just a few days. But my current run is on day 400 or so, going for the 500 day achievement. (But I have played much recently, playing for EU 4.) You don't say why you're not progressing and why you find interloper so hard, so I can't say what's going on in your games or why you've come to this conclusion. The main difference to me about interloper compared to voyageur (can't comment on stalker; I've only played about 5 in-game days on stalker) is that you have to accept certain very stringent constraints on your behavior. In particular, you have to keep moving in the early game; you can't really stay in one region for very long; there's just not enough food or loot. I don't stay in my starting region for more than a night or two before moving on. Loot and move to a new region. Keep doing that until you have the materials to forge. Once you have weapons, you can think about settling down a bit. But if you keep moving, can avoid wolves and manage the cold, you can survive on most interloper starts. Now whether you find that fun is a completely different thing.

Caves are one of my favorite places to live. You can absolutely live for days on end in caves, in any region, except the bogus regions that don't have any caves 😪. As noted above, wolves can come into caves and attack you, as can bears. I've been attacked by a bear in a non-bear cave before. Not sure what caused it to wander into the cave. I was cooking and might have had some scented items in my inventory.

I confess I couldn't bring myself to read the additional wall(s) of text, so I'll just say I play interloper, so I know all about using a bow. (I'm on about day 400 in my current run, so I'd forgotten you can't crouch and shoot until archery 5, but that's NBD). I agree that TLD is very limited in its game-play mechanisms. To some, that's its charm. To others, not so much.

If you really want to kill a bear without any danger of taking damage, you can. Just go somewhere it can't reach before shooting it. I suggest one of the following: the roof of the barn by Trappers (good for moose, too) the top of the derailed train cars (at poachers) in FM the broken tree in the middle of unnamed pond in ML the roof of the cannery workers residence in BI the deck of the Riken the rock ledge by the cabin at Miner's folly (I think the space behind the workbench works too, but I haven't tried that one) the fallen tree by Eric's falls in TWM the passage in the rocks where you have to crouch to pass through on Hushed River Some of these you might have to lure the bear to, others he will just pass by on his rounds. I'm sure there are other spots; these are just the ones that come to mind off the top of my head. But they are all places I've used to safely kill a bear.

Generally no, but I will break some down (sans tool) if there are no sticks readily available. This happens most often when I'm cooking and I just need a few more sticks to finish things off. But when out and about or traveling, I just ignore them.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about but I’m talking about the screenshot that @UTC-10posted to start this thread. You can climb down into that valley, loot the corpse that’s there, then walk back out up the slope.

If that's the pit at the end of canyon past the Stone Shelf cave and moose spawn with the dead body, you can absolutely go down and back up. I did it.

Now that the caves are warm, I like the Stone Shelf cave as a base of operations. Deer spawn out front, nearby moose spawn, and lots of wood and birch bark around. It’s also reasonably close to most things, at least for Ash Canyon.

The easiest thing is probably to go to Options, then Key Bindings to see what the default controls are. Short answer is movement is W-A-S-D, interacting/shooting is the left mouse button, aiming/placement is the right mouse button, I is inventory.

I've been there for about 20 in-game days on interloper, days 340 - 360. I agree with a lot of your observations, but I haven't had the same problem with the weather. (I have very similar clothes, but I have two underwear and combat pants under deerskin pants.) Weather and outdoor conditions seem pretty similar to TWM to me. I've been to the mine and back without problem a couple of times. One thing I really noticed is that there are *way* more outdoor warm-up caves than I thought from touring the region on Voyageur. I've encountered five or six so far, and I haven't yet explored the entire region. There are two by Miner's Folly (the bear cave and one by the Foreman's Retreat), and there's another one close to the rope climb down to the mine entrance. I even spent the night in one without a fire. (Not sure exactly where it is, since my mental map of the region is still very incomplete. It's by the base of one of the rope climbs that take you to the High Meadow.)

Our survivor has basic needs for shelter and food, just like a real person. Beyond that, survival mode doesn't provide any mechanisms to force the survivor in a particular direction, choose particular goals, or even survive at all. That's my point ... it's up to the player to choose those for the survivor. Even within the standard difficulties, you are free to choose an easier course or a more challenging course for your survivor. It's up to you. I don't see how adding external drivers encourages new play styles; they're just additional meters to be filled.

You could do what I did the first time I reached 50 days of survival: accidentally fall off the ravine trestle bridge and die 😂😂.